Letter: Changes mean less income

Editor: The Department of Labor claims ("Millions could lose overtime pay," June 27) that changes it has proposed to the Fair Labor Standards Act will have a minimal impact on America's workers and criticizes the Economic Policy Institute's recent report, which shows that 8 million workers would lose their right to overtime pay. Here is why the department is misleading the public.

EPI's report employs the same methodology used by the Labor Department and the General Accounting Office in their own recent reports on overtime rules -- with one important difference. The department claims that just 640,000 workers would lose overtime pay, but it looked only at those who are currently working overtime. It ignored the fact that if the proposed rule changes go through, companies will have a financial incentive to reclassify millions of workers -- some earning as little as $22,100 per year -- as managers or supervisors in order to make them ineligible for overtime pay. EPI's finding that the rule change would cost 8 million workers their overtime eligibility is based on a review of just 78 out of 257 white-collar occupations. The actual number for all 257 occupations is likely to be even higher.

Proponents of the rule changes assert the law needs updating and that the changes will cut down on litigation. But in fact, both Congress (in 1986) and the Department of Labor (in 2001) examined the overtime rules and concluded that they remain completely relevant. The changes would just replace understood rules with ambiguous new language, which could mean more time at work and less income for millions of workers.